The ones who helped to stitch together
the fabric of your world--
maybe they sang and strummed,
played games professionally,
acted, stood in the hell of politics
speaking of heaven, wrote a poem
or book you fell into, or by some other
means told you who you were and
weren't. When another one of these goes

over the falls that drop into no pool forever,
you find yourself in a narrow canyon, all
alone, as bewildered as a child, increasingly
indifferent to the path that leads
you out of there.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

“Something is
happening to men—their penises are falling off.”That’s the first line from a synopsis of my
new novel, Without One, which is available inexpensively on Kindle, free to Kindle Prime members:

The premise of the novel is that a strange new microbial
plague strikes in the near future.Although the microbe is a flesh-eater, it has a modest appetite.It devours men’s penises but is self-limiting
and stops there, leaving those affected healthy again but obviously not
whole.At any rate, the plague soon
gets its own acronym: RAPIDS: RAPID PENILE DEGENERATION SYNDROME, and RAPIDS,
as they say in Twitter-Land, is trending.

When I started writing the novel, I didn’t think the premise
was all that outlandish, given the history of satire.Gulliver’s
Travels does some wild things with the body, for example, and more
particularly, the protagonist and narrator of Tristram Shandy has his own phallic issues.I thought the comic, satiric, and farcical
implications of such a premise would allow people to move quickly beyond
certain gruesome images that might spring to mind, and as I constructed the
plot, I kept the gory details to a minimum.

But I had a heck of a time getting agents and editors
interested in the book.One well-known
agent who prides himself on being open to the most fantastical plots and
premises wrote back and said, “Sorry—too much, even for me.”A less well-known agent—another male—wrote that
he couldn’t possibly represent the book because he had a morbid fear of
castration.My response, which I didn’t
share with him, was, well, doesn’t that mean the book is marketable?I didn’t see the novel as horror fiction, but
horror fiction exploits people’s fears in a fictionally safe way, right?

Now, however, I think I have more reason to indulge in the
fantasy that Without One is a book
whose time has arrived, and I have the GOP to thank.They’re determined to politicize genitalia
and sexuality. True, they focus exclusively on women’s private parts, not to
mention their private rights.Apparently
nothing to do with female sexuality is sacred to them.In a roundabout way, via the issue of gay
marriage, they get around to male sexuality, but they are positively obsessed
with controlling women’s bodies, in my opinion.

But if you’ll notice, they don’t touch the penis, so to
speak.If males want to buy
contraception, they’re free to do so, without being forced to watch videos, have
their penises undergo a sonogram, or tell their bosses why they’re buying
condoms. (“Uh, we’re going to make water-balloons out of them.”)

According to the GOP view, men are also free to impregnate a
woman and then have her suffer all the consequences, have her choices about how
to handle the pregnancy limited, and so on.The GOP’s logic concerning
contraception—you’d think that, if they’re against abortion, they’d be for
contraception—makes an Escher print look realistic.

So it’s high time, I argue, imitating the self-serving logic
of the GOP, that we had a novel that shifts the focus from women and puts it on
the masculine member.

Without One
follows an ensemble cast of sufferers, journalists, doctors, epidemiologists,
evangelical preachers, activists, conspiracy-theorists as society struggles to
come to grips, as it were, with RAPIDS, which has almost everyone reconsidering
what it means to be a man if the man suffers a drop-off.The tale goes all the way to Washington
D.C., where it takes a detour around the wounded Washington Monument and amble to the White House, where the
president—one Luther De Long—has reason to suspect he’s been exposed to
RAPIDS.

Is he a Republican or a Democrat? The novel doesn’t say—because RAPIDS doesn’t
respect such boundaries.Respect
boundaries: what a concept.

Published by Congruent
Angle Press, Without One is available for download to Kindle on amazon.com.

Hans Ostrom is a poet,
novelist, and screenwriter.With Michael
Kerr, he co-wrote the script for the soon-to-be-filmed romantic thriller,
“NAPA,” starring Rose McGowan, Sean Astin, and Kevin Pollack. He teaches at the University of Puget Sound,
Tacoma, Wash.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

* Although the writing is good, the characters strong, and the story compelling, I just didn't fall in love with the book. Also, I'm dating another book right now.

* Given the market for fiction right now, I don't feel I can successfully represent this book. Your book's like a little piggy that's not going to market!

* I found your characters to be one-dimensional like the paper they were written on. I simply wasn't drawn into the story in a two-dimensional way. I used to study art. My favorite color is red. I went to Vassar. I live in Brooklyn.

* Thank you for the opportunity to read your novel. I don't feel I'm the best agent to represent it. I wish you much success. Being a writer, you must find some perverse appeal to this robotic kind of rejection.

* Thank you for your query. Due to the overwhelming number of queries we receive, we are overwhelmed. Unfortunately, we represent a small number of established clients, as opposed to an established number of small clients. Wait--I mean "fortunately." Therefore we must pass on the opportunity to represent you. We are passing.

* I used to like reading novels. Now I hate it. I have lunch with famous writers. I hate that, too. My favorite novel was published in 1951. I still masturbate to it. Editors are insufferable. New York is expensive, loud, crowded, and dirty. Help!

* You think Ingvold is an interesting character. We don't. In fact, we had a good laugh when I read the sentences describing him out loud. How can you stand to live on the West Coast? Isn't that almost China? Who names characters "Ingvold"? Ew.

* I'm afraid I lost interest in the book halfway through. I also lost the pages from the second half. Sorry. Good luck! I start drinking gin at noon every day.

* Your novel contains references to several different kinds of blades. I couldn't possibly represent it because I have a terrible fear of castration.

* I wasn't offended at all by your premise, unusual though it is. I just don't want to represent the book. I love being so picky! Ha, ha, ha!

* I've never heard of you. No one I know has heard of you. Where did you get your MFA? Did you get an MFA? Who do you know? The novel may be good, but I don't have time to read it, and no one's ever heard of you. Are you in Witness Protection? We represent celebrity novelists with multi-platform appeal that we can leverage. Am I getting through to you?

Author of Three To Get Ready (novel), The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006, and A Langston HughesEncyclopedia. Co-author of Metro:Journeys In WritingCreatively. Co-editor of The Greenwood Encylcopedia of AfricanAmerican Literature. Play the keyboard. Write novels and screenplays; blog. Travel a bit. Go fly-fishing. Member of St. Leo Parish, Tacoma. Husband and father.Member, Age of Aquarius.